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PV Councilwoman Wendy Whetsel Advises, "Crunch the Numbers before Approving Residential or Commercial Development"
by Edward Paul Greiff
In an another of a series of interviews with Putnam Valley Town Officials, the PCN&R sat down with Town Board Councilwoman Wendy Whetsel. She offered her opinion on the use of senior housing and commercial development as a means of the Town deriving additional revenue to offset its tax burden.
Whetsel: "I want to give you a little bit of background. I was involved with the Putnam Valley Residents Coalition when I came on board in 2001. At the time they had passed a resolution to waive all zoning for Senior Housing. They were under the impression that all we have to do is get a lot of seniors in here, they pay a lot of taxes and they don't have kids in the school system. What happened in the space of about a year we had proposals from U.S. Homes for about 605 units, a proposal from Lauderdam for 250 units, 25 units on Mill Street, and another 15 units on Barger Street. It was an excess of 280 units, theoretically for seniors.
"We had done a lot of research looking at what had happened in Somers, what had happened at Highfield because it went in as a Senior Complex and when they said we can't sell them then it was opened to the public. So now there are kids and families. We started to do a lot of research on this. And after talking to Nick Bianco in Yorktown he said, 'you know Wendy, these are the problems with the Senior Housing. First of all there is no way to monitor it. Secondly seniors require a lot of services; we have transportation picking them up, taking them to doctors, bringing them to hospitals. Number three, Bob Bondi was getting nervous about the fact that now all these seniors from out of town would be coming into the community and it would start falling to the County's responsibility for Medicaid and Medicare.'
"So what was thought to be a positive, with all this money, no one paid [attention] to the other side of the equation - what is the cost? And so the cost was going to be with new infrastructure; roads, fire and emergency services to be anticipated, and the fact that some of these would not be able to be sold as senior residences. We fought it. The Riverkeeper took this resolution to court because they had passed it without doing a SEQRA review. They determined that putting in that many units in a senior community that is dependent on well water and didn't have the infrastructure and so forth, was irresponsible of the Town. So what the Town ended up doing was they dropped the whole thing. They withdrew the resolution because it wasn't done properly; there was an Article 78.
"In August of 2005 Chazen held a visioning meeting, over 100 people came, we were broken up into groups of ten. Without exception no one wanted high density development in Putnam Valley. It was not what we thought our community needed. It is still not on the books two and a half years later.
"I think what often happens in Town is Commercial is presented as a panacea for saving Putnam Valley from the tax problem. But nobody did the homework, nobody crunched the numbers, they just talk off the top of their head. Again the only thing you get from commercial is property tax and if you go through the records you will find their property tax is put down lower because their profit level is so small they couldn't stay in business unless they were given a break. Even Wal-Mart, when they bring it into a community, is given a tax abatement just to get them into the community. The sales tax goes to the County and the Town may get a very small fraction of it. So other than the fact that you may be supplying to the community a service that it wants there is no money in it for the community.
"The Mahopac National Bank pays slightly over $48,000 a year in taxes and we crunched some numbers. You would have to put in one hundred Mahopac National Banks. Where are you going to put them in Putnam Valley? And it may reduce your taxes by $200 a year.
"The thing I got from dealing with people in the community is they like the rural character. We are six minutes from the Cortlandt Town Center; we don't want that in Putnam Valley. I want to see the businesses that are here succeed and stay, I want to see the buildings that are already here filled with businesses that are being supported. Santucci built a deli at Pudding Street. It's the only deli for all of the community around Roaring Brook Lake; the second deli is unfortunately going out of business and they have tried every thing to get people to shop there. Even at Oregon Corners the problem is the people are not supporting the businesses that are there. We've often said we would like a restaurant in town but they don't survive.
"In talking with Nick Bianco he tells me what happens even with commercial is: one - when you put in commercial it attracts much more residential around it, two - it takes more services such as police for shoplifting, highway maintenance, ambulance services, etc. I said to Nick Bianco you've got Jefferson Valley Mall. 'Wendy,' he told me, 'it's a huge cost because of all the services that are required. When they put in the Cortlandt Town Center it was like a cancer, there's one strip mall after another that sprang up. The only thing it attracts is more of the same. The problem is the Wal-Marts generate a hundred million dollars a year so when they pay sales tax to the County, that's a lot of money. We need to find a way that will bring business to our businesses. Everyone passes right through to Home Depot and Wal-Mart.'
"The Master Plan Statistics show that fifty percent of the people in Putnam Valley live a distance from town and commute to work. They're leaving at six o'clock in the morning and coming back at seven/eight o'clock at night. So you really have an audience that's not there. Fifty percent of Putnam Valley lives within 30 minutes of Town.
"With the number of shopping centers within minutes of town why would I want these in town? What we can offer is recreational activities like hiking, bicycling, camping, things that people would come up out of the city for such as a bed & breakfast like Cold Spring does. I know Peekskill is trying to increase tourism, maybe we can partner with them. We have to think out of the box. We can't just do the same thing, we should be looking at things that are going to be growing in the future such as a conference center, an environmental center, a renewable energy center. Look at oil prices - they are going to continue to go up. We can't continue to live our lives the way we have been, we have to move to the next level. I think we have to look at clean renewable energy and we have to think about working closer to home. Commuting in the city is not a problem, getting there is. There is a movement called "relocalization" which means you grow more locally which is why farmers markets are growing all over. This is going to be the wave of the future.
"In talking to Frank DiMarco, he has no problem in filling up the summer camp. The Town could run more summer camps and the revenue goes back into the Town's coffers. We could do recycling and make money on it. I'd rather see the Town make money and take it off the backs of the taxpayer."
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